The expectations game

It's Pooper Scooper Eve: Let the spin begin!

Obama: "We fully expect Senator Clinton to earn more delegates on February 5th and also to win more states. If we were to be within 100 delegates on that day and win a number of states, we will have met our threshold for success and will be best positioned to win the nomination in the coming months."

Clinton: "Although we are confident that we will win a diverse mix of states tomorrow, the results are likely to be close and inconclusive, due to the proportional allocation of delegates under the Democratic party’s rules. Despite this muddled outcome, we expect to maintain our current overall lead in delegates on February 6."

Heh. I love politics.

Over at Politico yesterday, Ben Smith asked, "What would be a game-changing, or game-ending, 'win' on Tuesday?" He later summarized the consensus thusly: "an Obama win in California, or secondarily in New Jersey, would make him hard to beat; while if Clinton can shut him out on the coasts and in places like Arizona and Missouri, her hand is very strong." Beyond that, he concedes, "we're moving into the territory where expectations aren't the whole ballgame. There's always the pesky question of who emerges with the most delegates." Ah yes, that "pesky" question. ITDS: It's The Delegates, Stupid!

Actually, though, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it's quite unlikely that either Clinton or Obama will do well enough in the coming months of primaries and caucuses to earn an outright majority with pledged delegates alone. The eventual nominee will need at least some superdelegates, and maybe a lot of them. Which, alas, brings us back to the expectations/momentum game, because the fickle superdelegates are going to hitch their wagon to whichever star looks to be rising faster in the next month or so. That is why Obama needs to "win" a decent share of states tomorrow: because not too many superdelegates will be swayed by "But he's within 100 delegates!" They'll be much more swayed by "He won Missouri and Colorado and Connecticut!"

As an aside: apparently California's "winner" may not be known until Wednesday or later, because of the high volume of early and absentee voting. This strikes me as excellent news for Obama, assuming that a) Hillary is going to win California but b) the margin is going to be relatively close, both of which seem likely. If, when everbody goes to bed tomorrow night (including the folks manning the printing presses of the nation's major newspapers), the storyline is "California too close to call," that will be almost as good for Obama as an outright win.

Even if he ends up losing by, say, 5 or 6 percent once all the ballots are counted -- thanks in part to Hillary's reported heavy advantage among absentee voters -- that will matter much less, as few will be paying attention anymore. The lasting impression will be that Obama, with a surge of momentum, rallied from way behind (despite Hillary's aforementioned early-voter advantage!) to make California "too close to call."

(This is all the more true because it actually doesn't matter who "wins," so there's no real reason for people to keep paying attention beyond a certain point -- especially given that almost-exact delegate estimates, which do matter, may well be available long before the statewide popular-vote "winner" is known. So the media, in spite of itself, may end up actually paying attention to delegate counts, simply because they'll be the only available numbers from which to ascertain a "winner"! And Obama will almost certainly do better in the delegate count than he will in the statewide popular vote, because the allocation system puts a premium on congressional-district landslides, which he'll presumably get in a number of heavily black districts.)

Comments

[Joe Loy]

Yay for Caah-lee-FOUR-neeYah. :) Count them Votes with all deliberate Deliberation :> and When the MSM don't Like it, tellem to go ter Hell :}.

btw, I calculate that it is Not Unlikely that HRC will win a Narrow statewide PV "victory", and BHO a Slim but still appreciable Majority of the total pledged CA Delegates. / See, CT, March 1992: Heavy Klingon Turnout gives Gov. Moonbeam the Win, Gov. Bubba the Delegate edge :> May God continue to Bless the United States of America ;]